> I don't see any evidence that people "expect them not to make money". Has anyone actually said that?
I'm not sure I follow. Reddit has said they expect them to not make money. Reddit's API pricing is high enough that any small accessibility app or client that is not exempted from that pricing will have to close up shop.
Reddit is effectively saying that they expect these devs to either not make money or to stop developing the app. In practice, those are the only outcomes that are reasonably possible -- exemption from pricing or the apps going away. And its entirely within Reddit's control and up to Reddit's preference to decide which of those outcomes happen.
> but that the "accessibility" sympathy card rings false when it comes from people pocketing tens of thousands of dollars a month.
This too is what I'm calling out. What do you mean by "sympathy" here? Do you have sympathy for the app developers, or do you have sympathy towards the blind users? Because if that sympathy is directed towards the blind users (and I would argue that is who the sympathy should be directed towards), then whether the devs are making money should change nothing at all about how you feel about those tools.
My point is that the profitability of an accessibility tool is completely irrelevant to the conversation about whether or not it's good for Reddit to allow free access to the API for important accessibility tools. It's really weird for Reddit to have that criteria in its carve-out, and it's worth interrogating why they included it.
It's worth asking why Reddit said "okay, obviously for really important tools like blind accessibility apps, we're going to make sure that they can access the API unless they have some form of funding in which case, tough luck." Well wait a second, a blind accessibility app making money doesn't make it any less essential for blind users that the tool stick around. Nothing has changed, blind users still need the app. And because of how expensive the API changes are, Reddit demanding that people trying to serve the community make no money or get blocked via an API they can't possibly afford is basically the same thing as them saying, "we don't think that community accessibility tools should have sustainable funding."
Basically no community accessibility tool is going to be rich enough to afford these kinds of prices. If they're not exempted, they won't be able to exist.
And as you yourself said, there is a sympathy argument being made here. But importantly, the idea the devs could make a living off of their work helping the community suddenly made that argument ring false to you. Why? What changed about the way you felt about the developers, about the value of the app, about the position that blind users are currently in -- that made that sympathy suddenly feel unmerited? Okay money is in the equation, suddenly you felt like the sympathy argument no longer was appropriate. Dig into that -- who were you feeling sympathy towards, and why did you suddenly stop feeling that sympathy when there was money on the table?
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> There's no conflict here, it just looks like one on the surface if you aren't careful to distinguish between the right to make a profit and the right to seek a profit.
I am not going to accuse you in particular of being inconsistent about this, that's not my intention at all. But you aren't the only person on HN, and short answer is: I disagree, a lot of comments I read about this are not making the distinction you describe (particularly comments that call people out for complaining about Reddit's policy).
Note that people are absolutely allowed in a free market to complain and verbally attack companies that make decisions that hurt the community regardless of whether the company is allowed to raise prices. Reddit has the right to seek a profit, and the community has the right to punish Reddit in the marketplace for trying to seek a profit in a certain way that the community deems to be harmful. This too is the free marketplace of ideas.
Again, I am not accusing you specifically of making this argument. But there are absolutely people on HN making the argument that critics of Reddit's policy have some kind of moral requirement to come up with a solution to Reddit's financial woes. The perspective you suggest is not usually typical of the conversation, and my top-level comment was discussing that normal disconnect. The typical comment I see is not distinguishing between right to make/seek a profit, it is specifically suggesting a right to make a profit in selective scenarios, and then clarifying that there is only a right to seek a profit when Open Source/community funding is introduced into the conversation.
Not saying that's what you are doing. But I completely disagree that the typical commentary around this subject is ideologically consistent.